Science and religion so often seem to be in conflict, with the chasm between them widening all the time. For many, the grounding of their religion is in faith and belief in powers beyond our understanding. For people of science, the grounding is in empirical facts and measurements that can be tested to help explain …
Continue reading "Pam Conrad: The NASA Astrobiologist Who Also Became a Minister"
In its more than a decade of exploring Gale Crater on Mars, the rover Curiosity has found innumerable signs of the presence of long-ago water. There have been fossil streams, alluvial fans, lakes shallow and deep, deltas and countless examples of rocks infiltrated and chemically transformed in the presence of water. The picture of the …
Continue reading "New Martian Surprise From The Curiosity Rover"
When searching for signs of ancient life on Mars, NASA scientists increasingly focus on organic material -- the carbon-based compounds that are the building blocks of life. Organics were found by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater, and now new papers report they have also been identified by the instruments of the Perseverance rover in …
Continue reading "Tantalizing Organic Compounds Found on Mars"
The presence of life brings many unexpected consequences. On Earth, for instance, when cyanobacteria spread widely in ancient oceans more than two billion years ago, their production of increasingly large amounts of oxygen killed off much of the other anaerobic life present at the day because oxygen is a toxin, unless an organism finds ways …
NASA's long-time motto for exploring Mars has been "Follow the water." That has changed some in recent years, as the presence of long-ago H2O has been confirmed in many locales around the planet. Moving on, the motto today is more "Follow the organics" -- the carbon-based building blocks of life -- in the search for …
Continue reading "A Detailed New Mapping of Where Mars Once Had Plentiful Water"
In the early days of the Curiosity mission on Mars, scientists were excited by what they found in what was once a mud-flat they called Yellowknife Bay. After months of drilling and testing, the mission team concluded that the site once had the roughly neutral water, an array of chemicals that could support metabolism and …
NASA's Perseverance rover has been on Mars for fifteen months now and is about to begin its trek into the fossil delta of Jezero Crater. It's a big deal for the mission, because the delta is where water once flowed long enough and strongly enough to smooth, round and move large rocks. Since proof …
Continue reading "NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars; an Update"
The rugged and parched expanses of Western Australia are where many of the oldest signs of ancient life on Earth have been found, embedded in the sedimentary rocks that have been undisturbed there for eons. One particularly significant finding from the Tumbiana Formation contained a substantial and telltale excess of the carbon-12 isotope compared with …
That early Mars was much wetter and warmer than it is today has been well established by numerous missions. Water ice is visible at the poles and many fossil rivers have been found in the southern highlands of Mars. The Curiosity rover found as well that the large crater where it landed -- Gale Crater …
Continue reading "A Huge Watery Reservoir May Lie Beneath the Surface of The “Grand Canyon” of Mars"
For the first time ever, a sample of pulverized rock from another planet has been drilled, collected and stored for eventual delivery to the highest-tech labs on Earth. Yes, a storehouse of rocks were collected on the moon by Apollo astronauts and delivered to Houston, and some small samples of two asteroids and one comet …
Continue reading "Sample Return from Mars Begins in Earnest"
Many Worlds 